Again, AMD has explicitly told me its native quad-core chips will be K10, not K8. That's from their Technical Director - Sales and Marketing EMEA, so isn't likely to be wrong.

My bad on that one, got drawn into the old K8L talk.

Originally Posted by James Morris

The QX6700 is a great product, but it is just two E6700 sitting side by side in the same packaging and sharing the same FSB. There really is very little difference between that and sticking the two processors in separate sockets.

Except for the fact it offers a drop in upgrade for people already running the dual core derivative.
Lets face it people could (and some have) simply have bought a pair of dual core Opterons or Xeons if they are willing to pay out, but adding a second socket will always bump up the price because you are adding more components.
I used to run dual Gallatin-1M Xeons in my home system back in the days before dual core chips, it wasn't cheap but for the only way of having 2 cores at the time it was worth it. I wouldn't have bought it if it was a choice between that and a single dual core chip.

Well, that's what I still run as my main work desktop - two 3.06GHz Gallatin Xeons watercooled. Apart from the lack of PCI Express, it's still pretty decent. At least it was until Core 2 came along. Kind of shows how much Intel had been standing still.

However, if the Quad FX motherboards are £150-£200 as the top Core 2 ones are and the processor twinpack is the same price, there's only the larger case and meatier PSU to factor in. Buying two HSFs rather than one is hardly going to break the bank. But whichever platform you choose, the graphics are the real consideration pushing you to get the 1000W PSU, and you'd probably get a huge chassis anyway. I wouldn't bet on Quad FX being noticeably more expensive to the end user than Core 2 Quad. Really, it's the relative performance which counts - and nobody's officially allowed to talk about that yet. So we'll have to wait and see.

K10 looks like as much of an update over K8 as Core 2 is over Core/Pentium M. I've recently had the chance of testing Core against Core 2 in two very similar notebooks. The difference is not as great in performance as you would think clock for clock - it's just that Core 2 launched at 2.93GHz, way above what Core ever got to.

Are we talking about Synthetic benchmarks or Real World? I think AMD's QuadFX shows how strong there Hyper Transport Technology is. Kentsfield is only about 1 to 3 % faster.

Nice read, and a Nov 30, 2006 review on Real World Performance.

Real World Quad FX Speed & Agility

Our real world testing today disproves my preconceptions entirely, and shows that in quite a few cases, the FX-74 is as fast, or even faster than the QX6700. We ran the numbers over and over again, and the FX-74 simply has the horsepower to compete with the QX6700 in the most CPU intensive applications. When the systems are completely maxed out and you’re running rendering, encoding, or multi-media applications, the difference between the two CPU’s is quite minimal, usually between 1 and 3 percent.

We all know that Intel’s Core 2 architecture is faster than AMD’s current processors so we have to believe that we are now seeing the interconnect efficiencies that AMD engineers have bragged about for so long now. We have heard many times how Intel’s Front Side Bus design is antiquated and inefficient, but let’s face it, it still works damn well. But maybe now as we move towards this Quad FX system, we are seeing all of AMD’s planning finally starting to materialize.The Bottom Line

AMD’s Quad FX platform is big, bad, expensive, piggish, powerful, and has an extended upgrade path that will allow power users double the desktop power in 2007. You could call the AMD Quad FX the HUMMER H2 of the computer world. The AMD Quad FX platform is going to prove to be an extremely capable machine but there are going to be big costs associated with ownership. If you are wanting to buy a quad-core machine now with no regards to upgrading to an octo-core platform later, you would be remiss to not invest in the Intel QX6700. The QX6700 is cheaper, uses much less power, and will give you slightly better performance.The Quad FX ain’t your momma’s PC.

HARDCOP was the only reviewer which I am aware of that used "REAL WORLD" benchmarks.

Originally Posted by Thorburn

Unfortunately you have quoted the HardOCP review in your post which has taken MASSIVE criticism.
This is the PC equivilent of suggesting that Hitler had some good ideas, you just lose the arguement.

Well, of course HARDCOP received criticism for there review. They were the only reviewer which I am aware of that used "REAL WORLD" benchmarks. Real world benchmarks don’t just bench the CPU, it benches your entire system. AMD’s Hyper Transport Technology has done a great job & pushed the K8 even further.

Notice that they did not base all there benchmarks around gaming? Unlike several other reviews.

I do believe though that AMD needs to work on there drivers for there QuadFX, because it can perform better IMO.

I do like the fact that the motherboard is Dual Socket for the desktop, a long with the other massive add-on’s, this really gives people the opportunity to build what ever they want, how they want, and how much they want? There really is no limit to what you can do with the QuadFX motherboard.

AMD has these Dual Socket mobo’s on there roadmaps extending past 2008 & into 2009+, that is only good news for us enthusiasts. I just hope they start releasing them into the market as both Socket AM2, AM2+ & AM3 etc.

AMD’s Hyper Transport Technology has done a great job & pushed the K8 even further.

It lowers the performance in some applications due to the extra latency penalties incured when fetching data from memory connected to the other CPU. See Anandtechs review with the 2 CPU's vs. 1.

Originally Posted by Super XP

I do like the fact that the motherboard is Dual Socket for the desktop, a long with the other massive add-on’s, this really gives people the opportunity to build what ever they want, how they want, and how much they want? There really is no limit to what you can do with the QuadFX motherboard.

There wasn't really anything stopping you before, I had dual Xeons a couple years back before dual core CPU's were available and a friend had dual Opterons.
Before that ABit had the BP6 (Dual Celeron) and VP6 (Dual Pentium III) which could be flagged as the real fathers of dual socket on the desktop, unfortunately Intels disabling SMP support in future generations of desktop processors brought that to an end but a pair of mid-range Woodcrests aren't too expensive and you can find an LGA771 board with PEG slots for similar money to the QuadFX's board.
The only innovation by AMD is that of marketing.

Originally Posted by Super XP

AMD has these Dual Socket mobo’s on there roadmaps extending past 2008 & into 2009+, that is only good news for us enthusiasts. I just hope they start releasing them into the market as both Socket AM2, AM2+ & AM3 etc.

Yep, and no reviews thought to tell people that while you can 'buy now and then upgrade to octo-cores' when the 65nm quad cores come around, they'll be AM2+ and therefore if you buy the first generation board now you'll be losing out on power management features.